Today my brother and I were shooting basketball.  We made up this game where we spun around in circles until we stopped and shot the ball with eyes closed.  It was fun for a while until we began to feel a little sick.  When I first started doing it I had no idea where the net was so kind of just made a shot in the dark.  It took a few times until realizing that I didn't have to guess anymore, my previous mistakes gave me insight to where I needed to place the ball.  I identified all the sounds around me and where they were coming from, from all directions.  I identified correctly and shot close to the basket.  I realized this concept has applied to me so much in my life here in the last few years.  My beliefs have been in and out over the years as far as what I believe religiously.  I had a point in my life a few months back where I agreed with myself to believe in nothing anymore and drop my wall of ignorance.  I really struggled with letting go of all that I had once believed, but I eventually adapted quite well.  I was always just believing in what everyone was telling me, and doing what I was seeing and what I was seeing was the typical church goer of Bristol, Va attending church every sunday to get closer to god.  This was all I knew.  It is easy to believe in something when everyone is aiming for that same thing, which religiously everyone wants to go to heaven, so they must aim to achieve that.  When shooting the basketball to the net, there is no surprise or wonder of where it is going to go because I already know where the ball is going.  I have no doubt in my mind that the ball is being aimed toward the net and will hit close to the net.  When I closed my eyes and spun around a few times I immediately felt lost and abandoned.  I had no guide to help me see where I was going to place the ball, and no sense of direction.  All I had left was myself and nothing else.  When we lose all of everything we know, we become nothing, I was nothing now.  I became terrified, but exhilarated at the fact that I had no idea where the ball was going to land.  I had finally come up with a spot that I was for sure was the right spot to shoot the ball in the right direction, when I shot the ball my brother began to laugh at me and when I opened my eyes I had shot the ball in the exact opposite direction.  What I thought was right was now wrong.  I am bewildered by this happening still, and to me this is saying much more than just shooting a ball in the wrong direction.  At this point, what I was doing was stupid and wrong because why do this when my eyes can see everything and if I have eyes I need to use them to shoot the ball in the right direction.  This is too obvious a thing you see.  At that moment I realized something.  We are blinded by our own eyes.  All that we see and all that we believe has come from watching others believe in that same thing.  What others believe in has come from watching people before them believe in that.  The people before them before them before them believed in the same thing.  Over the years we have accumulated this mass belief system that creates in us a sense of entitlement and authority over those who do not believe in that very thing.  It is uneasy for those people to think that they are wrong, so in turn they block that thing out that stirs in them and just keep saying to themselves they are right no matter what.  When I closed my eyes, after a few times, I started using sensory perception I never use, or use very little of.  My ears became my weapon and my guide.  I started listening to what was going on around me and began to identify that if I hear something that leaves my ear a little closed, then something is near me on that side.  If one side is open sounding, then there might not be something in my way.  I listened to sounds that are so familiar, but distant to me that I have heard all of my life from living on this particular street.  I have just never used my ears for much, mostly my eyes.  After figuring out where everything was, I began to shoot the ball near the goal.  What my eyes couldn't see, my ears adapted and guided me in a different way than I hadn't experienced before.  I think that is how religion has worked.  People are only using one thing instead of expanding and trying different things.  Some may say what is the point in trying different things if what we are doing is working for us.  This to me is an okay enough argument because only people can speak for themselves and if it is working for them, then that is fine.  My point in all of this isn't to disprove, but to distribute a sense of possibility in a world where everything is impossible.  We have to keep an open mind about what we do and believe, because our neighbor might not think the same way as us, and more than often, people put up a wall because it makes them uncomfortable.  We must think that what if we were wrong all along.  We must be balanced.  We must not become comfortable in one thing we do.  We must explore.  We must keep possibility open.  We must challenge. We must create.  We must encourage, not discourage to fit what we believe.  Life is precious, do not become damaged by a one way thinking pattern and damage others in the process.